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The Nine Connections View
5 min readOct 12, 2015

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Top 15 French Digital Media on Facebook and Twitter — July 2015

French Media Performing as Expected on Twitter, Ample Room for Improvement on Facebook

(A French version can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/nugh9oz)

In our analysis this week, we look at the expected and real online reach of French digital media.

We equate the total amount of unique visitors to a digital media’s website with the number of individuals with Facebook or Twitter presence in France. With this data, we can extrapolate the potential number of followers these publications could reach as well as evaluate their online performance.

Facebook

The Top Performers on Facebook

Orange News stands at the top of the list, scoring a whopping 492%. This could be because their Facebook page has a larger appeal than just people looking for the daily news. The company, which also provides internet and telephone services, has a firm customer base that also spills over to their Facebook page.

Next on the list is Slate, reaching 81% of their expected potential. Of the online publications on the list, they are performing quite well. Looking further down the top five we see Le Parisien, Le Monde and L’Express reaching 50%, 49% and 40% of their expected online reach respectively.

In fact, considering that these three publications have unique visitor number well within the top 10, one would expect better online traction from them. There is room enough for them to double their current engagement with fans on Facebook.

The Publications With Highest Growth Potential on Facebook

A remarkable observation is that the number one ranked website in unique website visitors is actually not featured in the top 15. Linternaute.com, which has over 10.5 million unique monthly visitors to their website, has fewer than 250,000 likes on Facebook. Some of their peers do not consider them a serious news site. However, with the tremendous amount of traffic to their website, they are in a competitive position.

At the bottom of the top 15, we see levels of expected reach ranging from 23% for Liberation to 12% for Sud Ouest. The entire bottom five could, at the very least, quadruple their social media engagement based on our expectations. Companies like L’Obs and FranceTv Info, who are in the top ten of unique visitors, should be able to do a lot better. FranceTV Info, especially has the added advantage of being able to potentially utilize TV presence.

In effect, nearly all the French publications have ample room to invest and strengthen their social media reach on Facebook and intensify their engagement with fans and followers.

Twitter

The Top Performers on Twitter

In line with earlier analyses, we see better overall engagement on Twitter. The best performer is Le Monde scoring 170% of expected reach, clearly outperforming expectations.

The second and third positions are also outperforming expectations. Libération follows Le Monde closely with 169% and BFMTV reaching 131% of expected reach. BFMTV is probably capitalizing on their television presence, and are considered the number one TV channel for news in France.

The top five is complemented by Slate and Le Parisien with 72% and 61% respectively. In the case of Slate, this seem pretty good as they are ranked 19th in unique visitors to their website. But from Le Parisien, we would have expected better traction as they are ranked sixth.

The Publications With Highest Growth Potential on Twitter

As mentioned earlier, we would expect the number one ranked website, Linternaute.com, to be present here. However they are missing from the Twitter top 15 as well, with just under 4000 Twitter followers.

Looking further down the top 15, we see somewhat lower results. They range from 16%, for Sud Ouest and MetroNews, to 8% for Francetv Info. Most of these publications are focused on specific regions, like the Southeast, East and North of France.

The publications MetroNews and Francetv Info can be considered anomalies as they are reasonably ranked in the unique visitor list. In the case of Francetv Info, again we would have expected their television presence to help them engage with online followers more easily. With MetroNews, we would have expected them to take advantage of their global presence, but the numbers tell a different tale.

Looking at the bottom five, there is massive potential for these publications to enlarge their engagement with online followers.

Facebook vs. Twitter

Comparing expected reach between Facebook and Twitter, it is clear that the overall reach on Twitter outperforms Facebook.

As we have explained in earlier analyses, this isn’t surprising because Twitter is used for keeping up with current affairs. At the same time we have also shown that both Twitter and Facebook are on the rise as the most important media for individuals to consume news.

Because this development is still in early development on Facebook, it is not surprising that news media are still finding their feet on how to best engage with fans on this medium. The upside is that even though there is still loads of room for improvement, some are already showing good potential.

Tell us what you think!

Our analysis is used internally by the company as a research mechanism to understand market behavior and performance on social media. Now we’d like your opinion as well. Where do you prefer to read your news? Online? Or do you prefer reading your news elsewhere? Tell us!

This article came to fruition through a collaborative effort between Nine Connections and CosaVostra. It was written by Anthony Gadsdon and edited by Smruthy Sachidanandan.

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